Saturday, October 27, 2007

My challenge piece/Art Quilts

Yesterday I stopped by a local quilt shop, Pine Country Quilts, to visit with the owner Shelly, meet her adorable baby boy, and talk about Landscape/Art quilting. I have been longing to learn some of the techniques used in these formats, especially since I started blog-surfing the Surface Design blogs awhile back. Shelly is going to try to put together a machine quilting class for December, and I'm really excited about it. I left her shop and stopped at the library where I picked up 3 books pertaining to Art quilts, Landscape quilts and quilting techniques. I have them for 3 weeks to pore over, experiment with, and learn from.

One thing I discovered today: my Pfaff 1210, which I got in May of 1980, has feeders that can be lowered, and a darning foot. Hard to believe I never knew about that all these years! So I can at least start playing with the freeform machine quilting technique. Meanwhile, I have done a little more to my challenge piece, although I'm slowly running out of ideas of what to do next... guess they will come to me! Here's the latest:

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Progress report

My challenge piece is starting to take shape... I added some discharge 'sprongs' to the background last night to tie it to the main piece. I have no idea where this is going, but I am beginning to see a 'sea pear', a fictitious relative of the sea cucumber, emerging... aha! A new species!



Sunday, October 21, 2007

Uncharted territory

At our playdate last weekend, Melly, our facilitator/teacher/inspirer, gave us a challenge: Cut into at least 2 of the fabrics we have created using Surface Design/complex cloth techniques; create a piece approximately 12" x 12". So today, I began my project, not knowing what the end result would be. I had one LWI-dyed piece from the playdate that I sprayed bleach over using sequins as a resist, and dishwasher gel to stamp some of the surface. It came out rather interesting, so I decided to use it as my main theme. I have cut out several shapes and pinned them over another LWI piece I dyed at the same time I dyed the cut piece. Here is what I have so far:



I cut away 2 of the stamped areas and pinned elsewhere on the main piece, then slashed some of the remaining fabric to create the 'rays'. Now it's time to let my imagination have a go at what I should do next.... more to come!

Cromer Elementary Craft Bazaar

Yesterday was the Cromer Craft Bazaar here in Flagstaff. I started selling at this bazaar the first year we moved here, 2003. It's a small fund-raiser for the PTO, and is usually well attended. I have always sold well here in the past, but yesterday I didn't make rent! However, I did get 2 special orders for my Autumn Leaves shirt, and one for my 'Ferns' pattern, so all is not lost. Here is my booth:







My Next show is in November, at Northern Arizona University... stay tuned!

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Surface Design Play date

Today, several of us got together at the local Community college for a dyers' play date. What fun! It was a beautiful, crisp, fall day! We got there about 9, and before you know it, we had fabric hanging from the line brightening up the quad area.






I worked on several pieces, and here are my favorites:

Autumn Leaves


Untitled - I spritzed bleach water over sequins on a LWI dyed fabric... kind of looks like deep space!




Discharge dyed on LWI-dyed fabric
using torn newspaper as a resist

Overall Pattern on LWI-dyed fabric



I was very inspired by the work done by the other gals... what an incredible amount of talent and creative energy! I hope we make this a regular event!

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Autumn Leaves

I have always loved the colors of autumn. Recently I did an experiment using dyes I had in my dye refridgerator for almost a year. I used golden yellow and light orange and a little scarlet and dyed 3 shirts using low water immersion technique, just to see how the dyes would react after all this time. The result was better than I had expected: The yellow and orange had not lost any of their strength, and while the scarlet turned out lighter than I had hoped, it still looked okay. I decided to use soy wax to create some autumn leaves, then overdye with browns for a fall foliage motif. Here are the results:


I'm soooo jazzed with the results, that now I need to do bunches more!